Window to the Soul

Originally published on clearasmud.blog on July 15, 2021.

Wouldn’t it be nice if planning something actually panned out as expected? That has rarely been my experience, and I think it’s safe to say that most of you can relate.

It is complicated to figure out a summer plan that addresses, to some degree, all the diverse needs of our kids. So, this was my plan: Shoshana would spend some time working with horses on a ranch in Wyoming, Chaya would go to overnight camp for a month, Zeesy would go to Camp Simcha for two weeks, and then they would all join me, Menny, and Chana Laya in San Antonio—where I grew up—for five weeks. There, they would go to camp while also getting a good dose of family that we don’t see all year!

Perfect plan :). We have done variations of such summer plans for a few years, and it has worked well.

Turns out, this year, it’s not working. All the carefully thought-out plans we spent a lot of time agonizing over are just not cutting it.

I am so grateful that, through years of therapy and a very encouraging and supportive husband, we were able to do some serious reevaluating and make some quick changes. I really feel like, without this teamwork, I could’ve been so easily stuck and would’ve been like, “This is our plan, everything is dependent on each other, we just have to deal with it and survive till it’s over.”

Ok, so I’m sure you’re wondering: What happened already? What did you have to change?

Menny was really struggling. We’re definitely learning a lot about the kind of environment he needs to function well. The dynamics of camp and a very busy, noisy household were constantly triggering him. I gave it quite a bit of time to see if, after the transition period, he would start to acclimate, but it just progressively kept getting worse. We provided many creative ways to support him—it just wasn’t working. It became clear that something needed to change.

Part of the plan that I haven’t mentioned yet is that when I’m in Texas, my husband is holding down the fort in Bozeman and uses this time to get a lot of work done. We each try to be flexible and accommodate what needs to happen. I am alone with the kids, and my husband is catering and cooking for tourists without me (delving into that is a whole other post).

When it became clear that we needed to PIVOT (sorry if you’re annoyed with that word), we had to figure out what felt right. Do we just all go home? That didn’t sit well because the other kids were doing well and had nothing to do at home. So, after much deliberation, we decided that Menny needed to go home. On two hours’ notice, my husband got on a plane, landed at midnight, and at four o’clock the next morning, turned back around with Menny in tow and headed back to Bozeman.

Is it a perfect plan? Not by any stretch of the imagination. Is it the best we could do at the moment? I believe it is, and so does my husband.

But I want to tell you how I KNEW it’s the best we could do under the circumstances, which is the real purpose of this post.

After my husband, Chaim Shaul, and I had a plan, I needed to speak to Menny. It was so important to me that he feel and understand the spirit in which this decision was made. The last thing I wanted was for him to feel like he was being punished in any way, that he was bad, or—G-d forbid—that I couldn’t handle him. Though I couldn’t control the way he feels or what he absorbs from the decisions we made for him, I needed to talk to him directly.

This is how the conversation went:

“Menny, it seems to me that you are having a really hard time here. Is that true?”
“Yes, everything is so hard.”
“Aba and I have decided that the best thing for you right now is to go home.”
Look of relief “Yeah, I want to go home.”
A few minutes later “Mommy, I don’t know, I’m going to miss it here… what should I do?”
“Does it feel right, though, the decision to go home?”
“Yeah.”

I felt good about this conversation, but I still didn’t know what was going on deep inside of him.

I really believe Hashem sent me the greatest gift I could ever ask for.

Unbeknownst to me, while I was packing for him, he went to one of my sister’s rooms and started to paint.

And this is what he painted…

He said to me, “Mommy, did you see my painting of me and you?” I was brought to tears.

To me, it says it all. It told me what was going on in his soul. And I felt at peace.

What do you see?